Columnist

Are there unclaimed tax savings hiding in your property?

David Holroyd, Capital Allowances Director at Haines Watts explains how there could be tax savings hidden within your commercial property.

With the recently implemented super deduction and the temporary extension of the annual investment allowance, a lot of noise has surrounded capital allowances over the last few years.

And whilst it’s great to see that more focus is centralising on the relief, many are still left in the dark about the significant amount of tax relief they could be sitting on - especially commercial property owners.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve owned the property for, or whether you own the building as a company or privately, as long as it’s a commercial property the value of the relief could be more than 40% of the cost of the building.

What are capital allowances and how do they work?

Whether it’s a new construction, extension or refurbishment, capital allowances are available to taxpayers incurring costs on their properties. The rates of allowances stretch from 3%-150% of the expenditure incurred in the same period, so it can be a lifeline when it comes to easing your cash flow.

Navigating your way through the eligibility criteria can be a daunting task, and identifying qualifying assets isn’t always a straight forward process. With this in mind, we’d always recommend consulting an expert on the matter, to make sure you’re staying compliant whilst also maximising the value of the relief.

Unlocking capital allowances in your property

Like many other business owners, you might not be considering refurbishing, extending or building during the current economic climate. But if this is the case for you, all is not lost. You could already be sitting on thousands of pounds worth of unclaimed capital allowances within your property, from air conditioning to water pipes, lifts to lighting throughout the building. As long as the assets still belong to you as the taxpayer, historic claims can be made.

Often when reviewing historic claims, additional value from your properties are uncovered too. We’ve seen time and again instances where claims haven’t been truly maximised, due to a lack of awareness, not being taxpaying when the expenditure was incurred, or thinking that all of the allowances have already been claimed.

So, if you’ve incurred expenditure on the acquisition, construction or refurbishment of a property in the past, it could be well worth revisiting your portfolio to see if any claims can be made retrospectively.

Surveying your property and assets

Whilst most advisors and businesses will be aware of capital allowances in some capacity, relief for commercial property is a highly specialist subject. It requires an expert eye to comprehensively establish entitlement to claim and to survey your assets in order to unlock the true value of the claim.

A capital allowance expert will review your entitlement to claim and where appropriate will come out to inspect your property to gather all of the necessary information to maximise your claim. The likelihood is that if your advisor hasn’t done so, not all of the allowances you’re entitled to will have been claimed.

The value of finding the right advisor

The best way to understand the true value of the relief is to speak to capital allowances advisor about your property - they will soon be able to identify and expose areas which you may not have realised were eligible for relief in the past, to help maximise the value of your claim.

Speak to our Newcastle team today.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Haines Watts .